Unity NXT® Budgeting & Payments

Unity NXT® Budgeting & Payments is the industry's most comprehensive solution for improving the quality and efficiency of expense processing. Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments empowers fund expense teams by standardizing processes, eliminating redundancy and increasing the time they have to spend on value-add analysis. From budget creation to invoice payments to analysis and reporting, fund expense teams can now automate the expense management processes for even smarter oversight.

Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments guides users through the otherwise complicated process of setting fund budgets and ensuring alignment between the chosen estimation and payment methodologies. Automated exception reporting and alerts make over- and under- accruals easier to manage. Users can correct any noted variances through the ability to suggest accrual rate changes and adjustments.

Key Benefits

Optimize accuracy and control through standardized administration and automated workflow

Increase efficiency and productivity through exception management and notification

Reduce errors by the fair and proportional expense allocation across funds and share classes

Unity NXT® Budgeting & Payments is the industry's most comprehensive solution for improving the quality and efficiency of expense processing. Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments empowers fund expense teams by standardizing processes, eliminating redundancy and increasing the time they have to spend on value-add analysis. From budget creation to invoice payments to analysis and reporting, fund expense teams can now automate the expense management processes for even smarter oversight.

Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments guides users through the otherwise complicated process of setting fund budgets and ensuring alignment between the chosen estimation and payment methodologies. Automated exception reporting and alerts make over- and under- accruals easier to manage. Users can correct any noted variances through the ability to suggest accrual rate changes and adjustments.

The automated solution offers an intuitive user interface which includes configuration and setup processes that are used by both the budgeting and payments functions. Tasks such as the setup of payment categories establish the estimation and payment methodologies used throughout the system. The full spectrum of expense processing functionalities makes paid invoices available for review and for further analysis by the budgeting team, thereby eliminating the inconvenience of sourcing, loading and validating payment data from upstream sources.

Available on the Unity NXT platform, the enterprise-grade SaaS solution for fund administration automation, Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments offers secure, global web-based access from both desktops and mobile devices, making it conveniently available wherever and whenever.

Key Benefits

Optimize accuracy and control through standardized administration and automated workflow

Increase efficiency and productivity through exception management and notification

Reduce errors by the fair and proportional expense allocation across funds and share classes

Promote collaboration through third-party access facilitation

Features & Benefits

With features including a Real-Time Dashboard, Automated Workflow & Notifications, Budget Analytics, Payment Management and the Currency Conversion Calculator, Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments lets fund expense teams eliminate spreadsheets to standardize their budgeting and payment processes, as well as reduce key person risk to increase control, accuracy and transparency. The solution provides a comprehensive view of the expense management process and utilizes automation designed to reduce redundant manual work and includes analytical tools that reduce the time spent on expense oversight.

Real-Time Dashboard - Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments provides business intelligence through an intuitive real-time dashboard to easily monitor the current status of all active budgets, as well as invoice and memo approvals. It also provides detailed progress indicators for each step of the workflow process. Additionally, the dashboard eases the process of ad-hoc searches for specific invoices and aids in historical billing analysis and enables users to view historical budgets and create new budgets, all in one location. It also allows expense team managers and fund executives to evaluate key data points at a glance.

Budget Analytics - With Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments, complicated budgeting functions are simplified through automation. Previously, tedious processes like comparing estimates to payments are now streamlined through exception-based analysis. Budget analytics sets exception thresholds for realized payments in relation to estimates and material over/under accruals and notes the exceptions. Fund expense teams can define budgets at the beginning of the year, perform periodic systematic reviews and can then propose accrual rate changes and adjustments. Traditional variance analysis reporting ensures that funds and sub-funds are not materially over or under accrued at valuation dates and, for fixed budget environments, profitability and total expense ratio reporting ensures that budgets are tracking to an overall expense ratio. To simplify yet another previously manual procedure, necessary accrual changes can then be authorized for execution by fund accounting.

Payment Management - Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments simplifies the process of invoice payment management. Global vendor setup is easy and improves the quality and control of expense management operations. Setup includes related payment instructions, invoice processing, consolidation of multiple invoices into a single payment and allocation of invoices to funds and classes. It also provides the ability to authorize payments to be executed by the custodian bank or other third party. To save even more time, users can quickly search historical invoices and memos to respond to internal queries or to perform further analysis.

Currency Conversion Calculator - Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments takes the pain out of modeling currency conversions across sub-funds and classes, even for large fund families. The automated Currency Conversion Calculator not only handles multi-currency conversions with ease, but it also normalizes payment's allocations in the invoice currency. Normalization also allows for accurate reports in a unified currency. Additionally, where expense ratios or budgets need to be expressed in basis points, the conversion is automated. With the Currency Conversion Calculator, fund expense teams can rest assured that the results will be accurate and not subject to spreadsheet formula errors.

How Budgeting Works

Collect and confirm data – Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments provides users with tools to automatically collect instrument rate data, trial balance and foreign exchange rates using a secure environment. Invoice payments are also stored for accessibility and further review. The system automatically alerts users of missing data when attempting to complete a task for which underlying data is required.

Create a budget and estimate – Users can create budgets at the legal entity level and align estimation methodologies with payment methodologies. Estimation can be configured at the legal entity level, fund level, or share class level, in addition to setting other properties like estimation currency, estimation type and allocation method. Once the configuration is complete, users are able to project and allocate expected future payments through the remainder of the fiscal year.

Complete budget analysis – The system's exception-based reporting features allow users to evaluate material differences in realized payments relative to estimates. In a traditional budgeting environment, they can assess any material over/under accruals, standardize the accrual rate determination process and improve the accuracy of calculations for overall control in monitoring fund expenses.

Calculate, forecast and monitor margin data – In fixed ratio environments, users can access profitability reports to monitor accruals and realized payments. They can then assess expected margin levels throughout the fiscal year. Users can choose to view margin data in a normalized currency or select a specific currency.

Approve a budget – Finally, in a traditional budgeting environment, a consolidated dashboard lets users easily evaluate key data points and budget exceptions. Once the suggested changes are approved, users can authorize accrual changes to be executed by fund accounting.

How Payments Works

Vendor setup – Unity NXT Budgeting & Payments allows users to create vendors at a global level with their related payment instructions and address. Users may set up one or more payment instructions per vendor using various payment types like transfer, ACH, wire and SWIFT.

Payment category setup — Users can align their estimation and payment methodology through the setup of payment categories. When users create a new invoice, properties such as invoice currency, vendor, service types and payment instructions are prepopulated through the selection of a payment category to minimize the risk of manual entry errors.

Memo creation and approval – Users can easily create a payment memo from one or more approved invoices through integrated workflow. The system can be configured to use the required number of authorized users within the approval process.

Monitor real-time status – A real-time dashboard allows users to monitor the current status of invoices and memos while alerting users of potential exceptions. Users can also search historical invoices and memos to respond to internal queries or to perform further analysis.

Authorize payment – Users can authorize payment upon approval and view the memo for accuracy. Additional information related to instrument allocations and underlying invoice details can also be maintained within the system. Once paid, the realized payments are automatically available in the respective budgets.

For more information about Confluence products, call +1 412.802.8632 or contact us.